3 Easy Exercises to Strengthen Your Chest Muscles

There are plenty of workouts concentrating on your legs, arms, abs, and butt. But here's a workout GIF for an under-sung (and difficult to work out) body part: the armpit. Not a particularly erogenous zone, the armpit is the pesky part of your body you forget about until you wear a strapless dress and wonder: Why do I have another set of boobs under my armpits? In fact, what most people refer to as "armpit fat" is actually skin — and there's not much you can do about that. But as trainer Larry Twohig of personal-training facility Culture explains, you can do a few exercises to work out your chest, pecs, and shoulder-blade muscles — which can streamline underarm bulge. Here, Twohig takes us through a few of these easy exercises. Perform each exercise 12 to 20 times for three to four rounds.

Step 1: Try the kettlebell fly. Lie down with your elbows bent — you want them almost fully straight to maximize tension on the armpit. Using the kettlebells, be sure to retract your shoulder blades as you draw your arms up and down. This exercise works out the pecs underlying the front armpit.

Step 2: Next, try the band-reverse fly with a resistance strap. Putting one hand on each end of the resistance strap, bend over with your back straight. Draw the strap out until the band touches your chest. This works out muscles alongside the back. But be careful to keep your wrists straight.

Step 2A: As a modification, you can also do the same thing in a seated position.

Step 2C: Or you can do the band-reverse fly lying down with your knees bent. The standing version seen in Step 2 is the most difficult.

Step 3: Finally, try the straight-arm press. In a gym, this is normally an exercise you can do with a cable machine. At home, tie a resistance band around a stationary object or ask a friend to hold the strap above you. Draw your arms straight down in front of you; again, being careful not to bend your wrists. This works out the triceps and all the muscles surrounding the lats.